Plastic bottles are popular for manufacturers and bottlers of hot-fill and cold-fill beverages. Despite numerous advantages over traditional containers, plastic containers present many problems that traditional containers did not have. For example, plastic containers lack the structural rigidity that traditional containers like glass bottles have. As a result, plastic containers are significantly more susceptible to collapsing or losing their shape when subjected to external downward vertical forces. These downward forces, commonly known as top-load forces, are typically present on the plastic bottles when filled and capped, when stacked and stored in trays or otherwise stacked on top of each other such as during shipment or when on display at a retail store. Those downward forces at times can increase dramatically as a result of transient shock forces that may occur, for example, during transport. During the hot-fill process, transportation, storage, and display of product in plastic bottles, the bottles are constantly subjected to top-load forces. It is not uncommon for bottles under these conditions to fail.
A need exists for a plastic container design that is capable of absorbing such top-load forces exerted on the bottle without causing the container to fail and that restores the container to its original shape when the force is removed.